


quantum entanglement (163,427 light-years back to you)

by pepperfield



Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Family, Officially Married, Recovered Memories, Slight Canon Divergence, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 06:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18204731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperfield/pseuds/pepperfield
Summary: Vers has a mark on her wrist and a hole in her heart.





	quantum entanglement (163,427 light-years back to you)

**Author's Note:**

> I've never wanted to write a soulmate au until these two (and therefore am not totally sure of what I'm doing), so please let me know if there are any issues!

Some days, Vers feels like something in her must have come undone six years ago.

Must have gotten jogged out of place during that attack, the one that seeps into her dreams every night. She’s too emotional, too quick-witted and short-tempered. She has too many weaknesses and not enough control. She’ll never be able to prove herself or defend her people if she can’t figure out how to push that part of herself back into place.

And other days, a different voice – slinking and sly, tiptoeing on the far side of familiar – whispers that she’s wrong in more ways than one. No other Kree was chosen to wield the same powers that she has. No other Kree seems to let the thought of meeting with the Supreme Intelligence gnaw away at their composure. No other Kree bears the mark that she does: a splash of flame and feathers painted in gold across her pale wrist.

Vers can’t shake the feeling that she isn’t right, somehow, and she doesn’t know how to fix it except to continue fighting to prove herself.

But she never stops wondering why it feels like a piece of her very being has been torn away. A piece that should rest heavy and comfortable at her core. Instead, she’s filled with the same white noise nothingness that blurs her memories, her dreams. 

No one ever has answers. Or, perhaps more accurately, Vers learns to stop asking questions.

\--

The same seed of doubt continues to grow after Talos and his operatives dig through her psyche and fuck around with all the memories in there. She files away all these false and fleeting glimpses of people and places she doesn’t know but make her heart clench reflexively as if she does. 

Then she’s on C-53, and the paranoia intensifies. A dull ache begins in her wrist, and she thinks at first it’s from straining a muscle while fighting off the Skrulls. But her mind keeps skipping back to the memories that flit in and out like moths to a porchlight (and where does that image come from? rocking chairs under the window, willow branches swaying in the yard, the gentle blanket heat of a summer’s night, a warm hand entwined with her own). 

She realizes around the time that she reaches Pancho’s Bar that it’s the mark that hurts, throbbing the way an old war injury might. An almost rhythmic kind of pain, at tempo with a heartbeat not her own. It isn’t constant though, and it slips from her mind in favor of more pressing issues as she and Fury push forward with their investigation. 

C-53 has introduced a whole new slew of questions. Who is she, really? Why is Dr. Wendy Lawson the person she admires most? Why does she have memories of a perfect little girl with a smile like sunshine over Hala? Why does this backwater planet feel like the remnants of a lost dream?

Why does she remember the sensation of a kiss on her cheek, her lips, her neck, her hands? Whose back does she remember pressing herself against as she drifts off to sleep? When she closes her eyes, she can see flashes of a person that she could have loved, from a life she could have led. She can feel traces of affection for the phantom scrapped together from wisps and whispers that she desperately tries not to let slip away.

Long dark lashes, knowing eyes. Calloused palms and a laugh that cascades like a firework. Wind in her hair, sunlight on her shoulders. A glimpse of gold fire against smooth brown skin.

Vers is certain that Lawson is the key to all this, even if the thing she fixates on most is the other woman in her fractured memories. When she and Fury find Lawson’s file, so many emotions unspool at the sight of herself, standing in the background of a photograph. Vers knew Lawson. She worked with her, admired her.

Vers had a life here. What else could that photograph possibly mean?

It’s not the only picture that sends her mind into a spiral. Seeing Maria Rambeau’s face after being haunted by her memory tears the breath from her lungs. Fury notices, but Vers doesn’t explain. She doesn’t know how to put into words the overwhelming surge of _want_ that suddenly seizes her heart.

Her mark burns.

\--

Fury has one too. Just the slightest hint of gold threading up from under his collar, and Vers knows without asking that it must be like hers. 

Perhaps all Terrans have them. Vers wouldn’t know. There seem to be many things she doesn’t know anymore, like her own name.

At least she has Fury and Goose along for the ride. She likes Fury. He’s a good partner, even if they haven’t known each other long. He makes her laugh, and everything that makes him human leads her to think that all the things that were always wrong with her might not be so wrong after all.

En route to Louisiana, she starts to feel her mark twinge again, and she pulls the sleeve of her jacket up to rub at it irritably, wondering when it’s going to stop hurting. Fury raises an eyebrow when he notices.

“They have soulmarks too back on your planet?” 

Vers looks down at her apparent soulmark and thinks back to all the times she searched for anything at all similar on Yon-Rogg, her squadmates, people passing in the streets. “No. I’m the only one. Unless everyone else had theirs somewhere I shouldn’t be looking.” Fury raises his eyebrow and she grins back.

“Huh. Could just be an Earth thing. Your theory’s looking more and more likely,” Fury says, leaning back in his seat.

“What _is_ it?” she asks, unable to stop looking down at the delicate feathers that end abruptly at the side of her arm.

Fury reaches down to scoop Goose back into his lap as he explains. “What, your soulmark? It’s how you find your soulmate. Two halves of a matched set: you get one part, your soulmate gets the other. Put them together and bam, you’ve got yourselves the whole picture. Some people are born without it, some people got more than one, and some people have the mark and don’t give a shit. That’s humans for you.” He scritches gently along Goose’s scruff, and then turns to eye Vers critically. “You do know what a soulmate is, right?”

“I can make an educated guess.” There’s no such concept in Kree society, but she’s met plenty of offworlders who believe in the idea, or at least see it as a romantic bit of fiction. Vers always the notion of having a soulmate was cute but improbable; too frivolous and sentimental for a warrior like herself. But the might-be-human in her leaves her curious. Makes her dare to wonder if it could be the person she thinks it might be.

  


After they land, Fury agrees to hang back and see how things play out. Before exiting the craft, Vers follows her gut and sheds her jacket. The Louisiana heat isn’t the only reason why.

They arrive at the workstation outside the Rambeau house too soon. Fury remains off to the side, letting Vers lead, but she stands frozen for a few seconds watching the woman inside continue working.

She looks exactly like her picture. She looks exactly like the woman who stars in Vers’ fragmented memories. Vers finds herself unable to move until she takes a measured breath that had been stolen away without her knowledge.

Even if every single memory she has of Maria Rambeau is false, the emotions running through her in this moment are as true as anything she’s ever known. She’d forgotten she knew how it felt to truly love someone until now, to be made whole by the existence of another person, and then she can’t understand how she could have ever let this feeling slip out of her grasp. Whatever happened in that crash six years ago stole much more than just her name.

She squares her shoulders and watches for one more second before calling out, “Excuse me, I’m looking for Maria Rambeau?” It’s only years and years of training and taming her nerves that keep her voice steady.

Maria pauses her work and begins to straighten, but she’s too far for Vers to be able to make out the expression on her face. Before she can say anything else, somebody speaks up.

“Mama? I-is that you?” asks a young voice from inside the plane. A face framed by a halo of curls peeks through the window at Vers, lit with an incredulous smile. The sunshine girl of her memories. The girl scrambles out as she calls across to Maria, “Mom! It’s really her!” before launching herself straight at Vers.

Vers catches her, wrapping her arms snug around thin shoulders like a reflex as the girl starts talking a mile a minute. This doesn’t feel familiar, not yet, but it feels right. As if Vers was meant to hold her like this. As if she might have done so enough times before that the muscle memory remains, even if nothing else does.

The girl has stopped speaking, and looks up at Vers with concern in her eyes when she realizes that Vers isn’t reacting the way she should.

“Mama Carol?”

“I’m not really who you think I am,” Vers tells her gently, and it hurts to admit it out loud. She never wants to see this could-be-daughter looking at her with such heartbreak.

Maria approaches, wary and wondering, and Vers wants to say something witty or meaningful, or even just demonstrate some degree of recognition, but there’s just not enough in her. Her heart might know Maria, but the rest of her hasn’t been rewired yet. Maria must come to a similar conclusion, because she looks at Vers and her cautious expression only grows more disbelieving. 

“Why don’t you come inside?” she finally asks, dusting her hands off on her uniform.

She looks like she’s caught between the desire to stare at Vers and the need to look anywhere else. She settles on taking her daughter by the hand and leading the way back to the house so that she doesn’t have to decide. Vers and Fury share a glance and trail after them.

“You okay?” Fury asks, nodding in Maria’s direction. He must have noticed the mark splashed across her skin in the same grand way as Vers’ is, but on her left arm instead of her right.

A matched set.

\--

The whole story must sound unbelievable, even with Fury supplementing her tale with his little asides. Maria and Monica basically tell them as much, so Vers shows them her little party trick with the kettle, smiling at the excitement in Monica’s voice.

Fury takes the hint to follow Monica when the girl runs off to get something, and Vers is left staring across the room at a woman who makes her heart both ache and sing. She’s tempted to keep the distance between them, as if that would somehow protect them from whatever’s to come, but Vers knows that this conversation needs to be held up close and face to face.

She crosses the room to drop down into the empty chair on the other end of the table, and waits for Maria to speak. It takes a moment as she searches Vers’ eyes for some kind of sign.

“You really don’t recognize me? Or Monica?” There’s no accusation in her voice, but she sounds hesitant, like she isn’t ready to accept everything that’s suddenly been thrown at her after so long.

“I know you,” Vers says, tripping on the words. “Or, I know that I know you, even if can’t explain why. I can _feel_ it, but I can’t put the pieces back together, because the person you knew just isn’t there. _I’m_ not there. There’s nothing but flashes of a different person, a different life, and I can’t tell if any of it is real.”

Maria studies her face, perhaps seeing the quiet yearning Vers is feeling, and she blinks rapidly several times before putting on a brave smile.

“You were real. _We_ were real. And then, six years ago, you took flight with Lawson, and we lost you both.” She looks away for a moment to gather herself, and Vers feels her own throat constrict. “They could never tell me exactly what happened, but I didn’t realize it would be like this. The doc was an alien all along? And meanwhile, you went and got yourself some superpowers before you found your way home?” She looks like she isn’t sure whether she’s amused or in shock, and Vers smiles helplessly back.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know I _had_ a home to come back to. I knew there was something missing, something that I’d lost, but I never realized it was _this_. I’m still not even sure if this is it.” Vers wants it to be. She wants this house that carries warmth in every floorboard and windowpane to be her home.

Maria is expressive when she speaks: the movement of her eyes and the purse of her lips and the way her head tilts speaks volumes in between her words. “It might not look like much, but yeah, this is it. It was you, me and Monica. We were...we were family. That’s what we always said. Two upstart pilots and trouble makes three.”

“That’s Lieutenant Trouble, to you,” Vers says, not even realizing the gravity of her words until Maria freezes, her dark eyes going wide.

“You remember?”

An image of Monica stuck up on a tree branch, laughing as Vers and Maria try to cajole her down flashes through her mind. “No, I- I’m not sure. It just came to me. But it’s all just bits and pieces.”

Maria shakes her head slowly. “You’re in there somewhere, aren’t you? Buried under this- _Vers_ , or whatever they got you calling yourself, you’re still our Carol.”

Vers looks at her straight on, hoping that Maria can read the truth in her eyes. “I want to be.”

It feels like time slows around them as they look at each other across the table, two women trying to find the parts of each other that were lost in the fire. Vers doesn’t know if she can ever be the person Maria’s been missing, but there must be enough of her old self left in there because Maria nods.

With a quick exhale, she taps her fingertips against the tabletop. “Then there’s something we should try."

“I didn’t mourn you,” she continues. “You were too damn stubborn to die, that’s what I kept telling everybody. They said I was dreaming, but we knew. I’ve got proof, after all.”

She lifts her arm, turning her palm outward so that Vers can see the gold on her wrist: a bird taking flight with its wings outstretched, an unfinished painting completed by the feathers and fire on Vers’ arm. A phoenix rising from the ashes.

“It never faded, not even for a second,” Maria says, emotion tugging at her words, and Vers isn’t completely sure of the significance of that statement, but she can take a guess.

“Mine didn’t either,” is what she says back, the fierceness in her voice surprising even herself. 

“I know; I’ve memorized every inch of you. I’ll have to know you well enough for the both of us, but that shouldn’t be any trouble. This won’t be the hardest thing I’ve had to do.”

“Best of the best, babe,” Vers says easily, like it’s something she’s always known. Maria’s quick smile is proof enough. 

“Higher, further, faster,” she agrees.

She gestures for Vers to extend her hand. So Vers twists in her chair and lays her forearm down on the table and Maria pushes the bowl of oranges aside so she can do the same, pressing their arms together side by side. The phoenix and the fire, whole once more. Maria reaches to hook their thumbs together, just a small gesture of reassurance, and Vers’ pulse quickens.

The mark _burns_ again, but this time there’s no longer any pain. With the pulse of heat comes a hard rush of more broken memories, an outpouring of puzzle pieces that Vers can’t scramble fast enough to slot into place.

The clouds stretched thin down below, and Dr. Lawson’s excited voice speaking into her ear about taking them up even faster. Monica carefully stringing plastic beads together into a necklace for Vers to wear to her birthday party. The sting of Vers’ scraped knees as she falls off her bike for the fourth time and she drags herself back to her feet before her dad can start yelling. The vibration of Maria’s laugh against the column of Vers’ throat as they almost burn another strip of bacon at four in the morning.

The Christmas lights strung up around the house on the mantle and the tree and a low chair because that’s the only thing Monica could reach without help. Off-key duets between Maria and Carol at Pancho’s while drunk on love and life and the thrill of adrenaline and the sky. Folding laundry together and descending into hysterical giggles since Carol’s old high school track team tee has shrunk so much that only Monica can wear it. 

The brightness of Maria’s eyes as they shake hands for the first time, both of them bursting with the need to ask about the other’s soulmark but neither of them sure if they want to be the first to take the leap. The crushing relief from the warmth that runs through her when they finally match marks for the first time, lying breathless and exhausted under the glaring sun.

The way Maria’s cheek feels under Carol’s hand as she leans in to wake her with a kiss on the morning of the crash. 

The crash. Carol’s last flight before everything she knew was taken away from her. Dr. Lawson’s- no, Mar-Vell’s last flight. The details of that nightmare begin unwinding again, and Carol feels herself growing overwhelmed by the memory.

Maria must feel something happening, because she links their hands together and slides down to crouch in front of Vers, who’s struggling not to be swept away by this deluge of information.

“Hey, you’re alright,” she murmurs, and Vers- Carol hears her, but there’s so much, _too_ much, but still not enough. She can see Mar-Vell, now surrounded by the still-alien scenery of Earth instead of Hala, but she still can’t remember their assailant, or understand why they crashed. It skips like a cracked record, bleeding into visions of Maria’s plane and Monica tumbling in the grass and the dirt under Carol’s fingers as she digs the heels of her palms into the ground to push herself back up. From a distance away – six long years and thousands upon thousands of parsecs – comes Maria’s voice to pull her back down out of orbit, to tether her back to earth again.

“Carol, listen to me. Hold onto my voice,” Maria says, both strong and shaking, and so tenderly patient through it all. “Your name is Carol Danvers, and you were the love of my life. You still are. You’re my best friend, and Monica’s other mom, and we’ve been family since the day you tried to impress me with that stupid bottle cap trick you learned from god knows where. You supported me when no one else would, and I had your back no matter what you would drag us into. Don’t you remember? Because I do. I never forgot. You are smart and funny and a huge pain in the ass and you were the most powerful person I knew, way before you could shoot fire from your fists. 

“You’re my _soulmate_ , my other half, and I never stopped loving you for a second, even when you were lost out there past the moon and the stars. Do you hear me? Come home, Carol. Come back home.”

 _“I haven’t been back home in a long time,”_ Carol can remember herself saying to Maria as they leaned against the side of the house, watching Monica totter across the porch.

_“What are you talking about? You’re home right now.”_

_“Yeah, alright smartass, but-”_

_“No buts, Danvers. I’m redefining the word for you. Home doesn’t mean ‘the place when you grew up’.”_

_“Oh no, don’t you give me a cheesy ‘home is where the heart is’ speech.”_

Maria’s laugh folded around her like an embrace, and Carol wants nothing more than to hear it again. _“Nah, I was just gonna say that home is where you hang your jacket.”_

Carol rolled her eyes fondly, reaching out to wrap an arm around Maria’s waist. _“Fine, then I guess I’m home.”_

_“Of course you are. Welcome back.”_

And here and now: “Come back to me, Carol.”

“I’m back, I’m here- I’m with you, _Maria-_ ” Carol chokes out, gripping Maria’s hand to her chest, her eyes finally seeing what’s been in front of her all this time. How could she have ever forgotten? Her soulmate, her wife, the other half of her heart.

“Carol? Is it really you? Are you seeing me?”

“I see you- I _remember_ you. Not everything, but enough. Enough to know. Enough to be sure that I never stopped loving you either.”

Carol surges forward and Maria catches her in an embrace as they tumble to the ground. Tears gather in her eyes but they’re both laughing from joy. Maria’s arms remain wrapped around Carol’s waist as Carol brings her hands up to cup her soulmate’s face, before leaning forward to kiss her again for the first time in over half a decade. Somewhere inside herself, Carol feels the world shift back into alignment, rotating on its axis once more.

“You just lost the thread for a little while,” Maria says when Carol finally pulls away.

“Never again. I promise.”

They stay entangled with one another in a hug on the ground, just slowly relearning the other’s touch and smile and scent, when the others in the household make themselves known again.

“We found it!” calls Monica, as she marches back down the stairs with Fury on her heels. “Come look!”

“Sure thing, baby,” Maria replies, letting Carol help her back to her feet.

“Be there in just a sec, sweetheart. Did you bring my jacket down too?”

“No, I forgot, but I can-”

Maria and Carol share one of their secret smiles as they can hear Monica doing the calculations in her head, and sure enough, she slides back into the kitchen a second later.

“Wait, did you remember?” She takes in how close the two of them are standing, and hope lights up her face as she runs over. “Mama?”

“The one and only,” Carol says warmly, holding out her arms for Monica to leap into again, this time catching her in mid-air and hugging her tight. “I missed you, Lieutenant Trouble. I missed you every second of every day, even if I didn’t know it.”

“I missed you too,” Monica says into her crook of her neck, and Carol swings her daughter around, holding on tight as Maria watches them fondly. This is right. This is where she came from and this is where she was meant to be.

“Sounds like you’re back in action,” Fury says from the counter, looking over them with approval.

“Better off than when I came, at least. I’m ready for whatever’s headed our way.”

“Glad to hear it. Well done,” he replies, lifting his glass at her in an informal toast, and she nods back gratefully.

“Thanks for the assist.”

She’s thankful it was him coming along for this wild ride. Carol knows her old self is still not all here, but the shattered glass pieces of her life, her identity, are falling back into place. There’s still a war on, and Talos in pursuit, and a hundred other questions that Carol doesn’t have an answer for, but she knows she can handle it, especially with Maria alongside her.

“Mama,” Monica says as Carol lowers her back to the floor. “You’re here to stay, right?”

Maria’s hand, which had come to rest lightly on Carol’s arm, tightens its grip as she waits to hear Carol’s response. Carol turns to look her in the eye, knowing Maria can read her from that much alone. The tension in Maria’s shoulders lessens, and the two of them exchange a silent nod before Carol returns her attention to their daughter.

“Yeah, sweetheart, I’m here now. There are some things I need to take care of first – some missing pieces I’m still looking for, but I’m here to stay. I’m finally home.”

Monica nods, before drawing both of them forward into a hug. Carol is tempted to close her eyes for a moment so she can soak up every other sensation of this moment, but she can’t bear to take her eyes off her family. The years and light-years and pocketful of luck it took to bring her back here cost her enough that she thinks she deserves to slow down and take her time for once.

Maria meets her gaze over Monica’s head, smiling the way she always did when Carol came up with another one of her brilliant ideas. It’s that perfect blend of wry and indulgent, and Carol revels in the depth of how much she loves her.

“You kept us waiting long enough,” Maria says. “Welcome back.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] quantum entanglement (163,427 light-years back to you)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20573396) by [pepperfield](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperfield/pseuds/pepperfield), [rhythmia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhythmia/pseuds/rhythmia)




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